Survival of the

TruthiestSJ, 2017

“The views and opinions expressed in this presentation are mine and do not necessarily reflect the

official policy or position of AppNexus. Assumptions made and conclusions drawn in this presentation

are not reflective of the position of AppNexus.”

ME

TODAYS TALK

Social engineering at scale

Responses

Useful earlier work

This changes internet?

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

AT SCALE

Facebook group total_shares interactions number

of posts

word

count

Facebook.com/Blacktivists 103,767,792 6,182,835 500+ 15349

Facebook.com/Txrebels 102,950,151 3,453,143 500+

Facebook.Com/MuslimAmerica 71,355,895 2,128,875 500+ 6892

Facebook.Com/Patriototus 51,139,860 4,438,745 500+ 53782

Facebook.Com/Secured.Borders 5,600,136 1,592,771 500+ 53850

Facebook.Com/Lgtbun 5,187,494 1,262,386 500+ 15020

ECOSYSTEM: INTERNET

ENDPOINTS: WETWARE

COMMONLY USED• Imperfect recall

• Unconscious bias

• Confirmation bias

• Mental immune systems

• Familiarity backfire effect

• Memory traces

• Emotions = stronger traces

VULNERABILITIES

CHANNELS

PAYLOADS

Misinformation Disinformation Abuse “Normal”

Accidental / sloppy

untruths

Deliberate /

focussed

untruths

Focussed opinion

/ facts

Hate speech

Bullying

Doxxing

Everything

else

THREAT LEVELS

RESPONSES

FAKE HUNTERS (IRMA)

ADTECH

MEDIA / JOURNALISTS

POLITICS I

POLITICS II

POLITICS III

SOCIAL NETWORKS

HACKERS

Build stuff! Add extra machine learning!

USEFUL EARLIER WORK

(Those Darned Telegraph

Operators…)

BIG DATA’S FOURTH V

WIKIPEDIA

HACKERS, OSINT

AI AND AUTONOMY

THIS CHANGES INTERNET?

PEOPLE SHIFTS

BOTS AREN’T GOING

AWAY

COEXISTING WITH BOTS

NEW HACK LAYER /

INDUSTRY FORMING

PROBABLY INCLUDES

SURVIVAL OF THE

TRUTHIEST?

THE END

@bodaceacat